(The writer died in 1912. Through psychic
means—entailing “automatic writing”—he authored three books subsequent to his
death, and is now providing his reminiscences by similar means.)

When those who have been admitted to the bar,
supposed servants of the law, engage in subterfuge, causing court proceedings
to veer from the course they would otherwise have taken, they commit an act of
perfidy and thus defile their oaths as attorneys at law.

This proposition is set forth because to this
day, 123 years after I presided over the action by Miss Louise Perkins against
Elias “Lucky” Baldwin for the breach of a promise to marry her, I take offense
at the execrable conduct on the part of attorneys for Mr. Baldwin in causing
me, through trickery, indeed fraudulence, to be barred from ruling on the
defendant’s motion for a new trial.

I had presided over the 1886 trial in Los AngelesCounty albeit my post was that
of a judge of the Superior Court of the County of Santa Barbara. The Superior Court of this county was
comprised of two members, the Honorable Anson Brunson and the Honorable William
A. Cheney, neither of whom desired to preside in the case, and request was made
of me by Judge Brunson to do so. The fact of such a request was reported in the
newspapers and was a matter of common knowledge.

Surely it could not have been be supposed by any
reasonable man that I came to the courthouse of this county as an intruder;
took a place, trespassorily, on the bench in Department Two, where Judge Cheney
normally presided; and called a case on Judge Cheney’s docket—with the two
judges, court personnel, and attorneys for parties simply acquiescing in my
bold usurpation of powers. Yet, this fantastic scenario is, in essence, what
the duplicitous lawyers for Mr. Baldwin sought to portray to the California
Supreme Court.

Here is the sequence of events:

June 19: I announced from the
bench, in Santa
Barbara,
that I had submitted to the Honorable George Stoneman Jr., governor of the
State of California, my resignation from
office, to take place July 1. I had decided to make permanent the residency in Los Angeles of myself and my wife,
and to engage in the practice of law in partnership with Julius Brousseau.
(That gentleman had served as city attorney of Saginaw, Mich., then of Kankakee, Ill., and had been the the first treasurer of the
Los Angeles Bar Association.)

June 24: Judge Cheney and I both
occupied the bench at 1:30
p.m., the
time set for the hearing of a motion for a new trial. The defendant was most
upset by the jury’s award of $75,000 to the plaintiff, and wished, by a motion
for a new trial, to have the verdict nullified. But the objective of the
defendants’ attorneys that day was not to secure a favorabvle ruling on the
motion, but to obtain delay. They asked that the order setting the hearing for
that date be vacated, and I denied the motion. The defense then prevailed upon
me to continue the hearing, its motion being supported by an affidavit sworn to
by Mr. Baldwin’s attorneys, Messrs. James G. Howard, Walter Van Dyke, and Bradner
W. Lee. I obliged by continuing the matter to 9 o’clock a.m. on June 28. A short
time after alighting from the bench, it became clear why the defendant’s
attorneys were intent upon my not acting on the motion. They were hopeful that
prior to my ruling on it—and they obviously anticipated I would deny it—the
Supreme Court would intercede. Indeed, it did. Later that afternoon, I was
handed a telegram announcing that the court had ordered me to show cause on
Aug. 2 why a writ of prohibition should not be granted precluding me from
rendering further rulings in the case. By Aug, 2, the issue would be moot; as aforestated,
my resignation was set to take place July 1. A writ had been sought by the
defense lawyers on the spurious ground that I had not been asked to preside
over the case either by Judge Brunson or Judge Cheney.

June 30: Efforts were afoot in San Francisco by Miss Perkins’ lead
counsel, Mr. Stephen M. White, to gain a dismissal of the writ petition. A
hearing on the motion for a new trial was scheduled in Department Two of the
Superior Court for Los
AngelesCounty for 9:00 o’clock a.m. on June 30, the last
day before I would be drained of judicial powers. I had business to attend to
in Santa
Barbara
on June 29, and rode all night by carriage so that I might attend to the motion
in Los
Angeles,
should the Supreme Court permit. No word had been received from San Francisco that morning. At 2:00 o’clock in the afternoon, I
took the bench and announced that the motion would not be heard by me; Mr.
White’s efforts had failed, as stated by him in a telegram. Judge Cheney then
set the motion for hearing on July 12.